Rate My Professor Ben Groom

Professor Ben Groom holds the Dragon Capital Chair in Biodiversity Economics and is Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics at the University of Exeter Business School, where he also serves as Co-Director of the Land, Environment, Economics and Policy (LEEP) Institute. He joined the University of Exeter in summer 2020 from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), where he was Professor of Environment and Development Economics in the Department of Geography and Environment and a researcher at the Grantham Research Institute from 2012 to 2020. Groom earned his PhD in Economics from University College London in 2005 with a thesis on Essays in Applied Resource Economics, an MSc in Environmental and Resource Economics from UCL, and a BSc in Economics from the University of Sheffield. Earlier in his career, he worked as an Overseas Development Institute Fellow in the Department of Water Affairs at Namibia's Ministry of Agriculture from 1998 to 2000 and consulted for the UN Mission in Kosovo.

Groom's research focuses on biodiversity and climate change economics, intergenerational equity and social discounting for long-term public projects, environmental valuation, adaptation to climate change, land-use change, deforestation, and the economics of biodiversity. His influential publications include 'Discounting Disentangled: An Expert Survey on the Components of the Long Term Social Discount Rate' (American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 2018), 'How Should Benefits and Costs be Discounted in an Intergenerational Context?' (Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, 2014, co-authored with Arrow et al.), 'Climate economics support for the UN climate targets' (Nature Climate Change, 2020), 'Determining Benefits and Costs for Future Generations' (Science, 2013), and 'Declining Discount Rates: the long and the short of it' (Environmental and Resource Economics, 2005). He has advised governments of the UK, US, Norway, Netherlands, China, Pakistan, and Bolivia on environmental policy, as well as the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, OECD, WWF, UN International Seabed Authority, and UK Office for National Statistics. Groom chairs the scientific committee of the BIOECON network, co-organises its annual conference, and is a member of the HM Treasury Biodiversity Working Group. In 2026, he co-leads the UK Treasury's independent review of the Green Book discount rate. A paper co-authored by Groom received the Frontiers Planet Prize in 2025. His work has shaped social discounting guidance across multiple countries and organizations.